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Mr Millin was serving with 1st Commando Brigade when he landed at Sword Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

His
commanding officer, Lord Lovat, asked him to ignore instructions
banning the playing of bagpipes in battle and requested he play to
rally his comrades.

Mr Millin marched up and down the shore in his kilt piping ‘Highland Laddie’. He continued to play as his friends fell around him and later moved inland to pipe the troops acrosa Pegasus Bridge, playing ‘Blue Bonnets Over the Border.’

Bill Millen as a young man and in his later years. The French recognised his courage by awarding him their Croix d’Honneur
and two other gallantry decorations. They also plan to erect a statue
of him

He later said: ‘Lord Lovat said this was going to be the greatest invasion in the history of warfare and he wanted the bagpipes leading it. He said I was to play and he would worry about the consequences later.

‘As they [his fellow soliders] moved off I found myself left on my own. No one told me to stop playing, so I had to run after them and catch them up.’

His bagpipes were finally silenced four days later by a piece of shrapnel.

They were handed over to the National War Museum of Scotland in 2001, along with his kilt, commando beret and knife.

In 2006 when a song was written in his honour by folk singer Sheelagh Allen, Mr Millin said: ‘I enjoyed playing the pipes, but I didn’t notice I was being shot at. When you’re young you do things you wouldn’t dream of doing when you’re older.’

For the past 66 years, Mr Millin, a grandfather, returned to France on numerous occasions to pay his respects to his fallen comrades.

The French recognised his courage by awarding him their Croix d’Honneur and two other gallantry decorations. They also plan to erect a statue of him.

Yesterday Ken Sturdy, chairman of the Torbay Normandy Veterans’ Association, said: ‘Bill’s pipes were his weapons. He was part of that romantic history of old warfare which had gone back to the Middle Ages where trumpets and drums were played.’

His commander, Lord Lovat, was one of the most colourful figures of the war, a hereditary chief of the clan Fraser who became a brilliant military commander.

A brigadier on D-Day, he led his Special Service Brigade onto the beaches and through some of the fiercest fighting in the wake of D-Day before being seriously wounded six days later.

When he died in 1994 Mr Millin played at his funeral.

Mr Millin’s funeral will be held privately, and a service of remembrance will be held at a later date.